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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26259373">Soiled</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangeflavor/pseuds/orangeflavor'>orangeflavor</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Game of Thrones (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Unresolved Sexual Tension, directly post Battle of the Bastards, hints at dark Jonsa, some Stark family feels</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:06:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,143</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26259373</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangeflavor/pseuds/orangeflavor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"'Talk to me, Sansa,' he pleads, voice wavering, and she shuts her eyes to the sound.</p><p>Like a gale. Like a mountain coming down. This is how it empties from her.</p><p>'What do you want me to say?"' she bites out, voice quaking." -</p><p>Jon and Sansa. The start of their descent.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jon Snow/Sansa Stark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>284</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Soiled</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.</p><p>Soiled</p><p>"'<em>Talk to me, Sansa,' he pleads, voice wavering, and she shuts her eyes to the sound.</em></p><p>
  <em>Like a gale. Like a mountain coming down. This is how it empties from her.</em>
</p><p>'<em>What do you want me to say?"' she bites out, voice quaking."</em> -</p><p>Jon and Sansa. The start of their descent.</p><p>* * *</p><p>"How did you know?"</p><p>His question stills her hand at his temple, the words gruff and choked off, voice cracking from disuse.</p><p>Sansa lowers her touch, hand clenching around the wet cloth in her grip. Jon looks up at her, and even through the grime and blood caked along his face, his eyes find hers instantly. The look is devastating.</p><p>Sansa swallows thickly, trying to find her voice. She'd not said a word to him when she first found him after the battle, after Ramsay was carted off to the kennels, after Rickon's body was tended to. She'd found him in Robb's old room, his armor discarded, leaning back along the desk, hands gripping the edge. She'd been sure he'd leave bloodstains in the wood, but she couldn't find it in herself to scold him for it. Instead, she sighed, found a water basin, stole a clean cloth from the nearby bureau, and set to work on him. He'd watched her silently at first, slumped in his lean, exhausted and weary. There was something alarming in his stillness, in the way his eyes watered momentarily before he'd blinked it away, glancing toward the window instead, jaw clenching beneath the steady swipe of her cloth along his soiled cheek.</p><p>She finally sees skin peeking out beneath the dirt again after several minutes of work, twisting out the slowly pinking water from her cloth before setting back to his face.</p><p>His question has her blinking dumbly at him, mouth dry. "What?" she asks, and she finds her voice is as broken as his.</p><p>He clears his throat, looks away. "Rickon."</p><p>Her knuckles go white over the cloth in her grip, hands hanging uselessly at her sides now.</p><p>Jon glances back up at her, his expression half-hidden in grime. "How did you know we'd never get him back?"</p><p>It isn't accusatory, but she feels the cut regardless. She shakes her head, jaw clenching. When she sets the cloth back to his cheek, it's with her other hand gently gripping at his chin, turning his face so she doesn't have to meet his eyes when she answers him. "You said you fought the white walkers yourself. Saw the destruction they wrought firsthand. Lost some of your own to them."</p><p>His brows furrow at her explanation, not following. "Sansa, what does that – "</p><p>"You said you've looked the enemy in the eye and there was nothing human left in them." Her words come clipped and on a shallow breath, her fingers trembling at his jaw.</p><p>He stays silent, watching her out of the corner of his eye.</p><p>Sansa sighs, touch retreating as she turns back to the basin. Another rinse. Another drain. The water darkens with each return. She sets back to cleaning his face. "You know best the monsters in the North." Her lips purse, something constricting in her chest. "I knew best the monsters in our home."</p><p>Jon doesn't answer her, and she is grateful for it.</p><p>Another silence overtakes them, steady and stifling. She glances down to the bunched fists he keeps atop his knees.</p><p>"I wish I..." he begins, voice rough, licking his lips as he tries again. "I wish I would have known. I wish I would have understood that." He meets her eyes when she looks back to his face. "When you tried to tell me."</p><p>She offers him nothing else. No admonishment, but no comfort either. There are a lot of things she wishes herself, but there is no wishing the past into unbeing. It is not a truth she has come by easily.</p><p>A low growl brews in the back of his throat, catching her attention. Jon wipes a muddied hand over his blood-slicked hair in aggravation. "Maybe if I knew I wouldn't have...I wouldn't have charged the field so recklessly, wouldn't have rushed headlong into his baiting. Maybe we could have saved more men, maybe we could have..." He huffs a breath, shaking his head. "I don't know. Maybe it would have made losing him easier," he chokes out, jaw quivering with the words.</p><p>Sansa tilts his head so she can swipe the cloth down the slope of his neck. "Knowing does not make losing any easier."</p><p>Jon watches her from his angled view, lips pursing tight. He clamps down on that quiver in his jaw when she swipes slow and even along his throat.</p><p>Sansa dips her gaze lower, braid slipping over her shoulder. "I think...deep down in my heart...a part of me began saying my goodbyes the moment you read Ramsay's letter back at Castle Black." She trembles at the admission, eyes watering. And then she cracks a self-chastising smile, eyes flicking up to his. "Does that make me a bad sister?" she gets out on an unsteady exhale.</p><p>Jon twists his face to hers, catching her hand at his neck, lowering it gentling with a dirty thumb grazing over the smooth skin of her knuckles.</p><p>She closes her eyes, smothers the sob building in her throat.</p><p>"Sansa," he soothes, holding her hand between them.</p><p>She opens her eyes then, watches the unease flickering over his face, his mouth opening and closing over words he doesn't know how to bring to air. She just shakes her head, her free hand wiping at her eyes until they are clear. "Doesn't matter much now, though, does it?" she asks bitterly, biting her tongue to keep that bitterness from overflowing.</p><p>Jon tips his head, watching her, and he looks so tired, suddenly. So worn at the edges, so blistered and ragged. She wants to sob for an altogether different reason, just looking at him. She wants to throw her arms around his neck and cry and cry and cry. She keeps the instinct coiled tight in her gut.</p><p>And then he reaches up and takes the end of her braid between his fingers, watching the motion. Sansa feels her lungs still in her chest, eyes fixed to him. But he's focused on the twist of hair between his thumb and forefinger, a fond smile quirking at the edge of his lips. "Hey," he says, face softening into something warm and warless, a face she used to know in their youth. "Do you remember when Rickon used to steal your lemon cakes? And how he used to blame Shaggydog?" A watery laugh leaves him, even as she sucks a sharp breath between her lips, chest aching. "And do you remember how – "</p><p>"Please don't," she whispers, the words short and breathless.</p><p>Jon stills his hand at her braid, glancing up at her.</p><p>She pulls her hand from his, bunches the soaked cloth between trembling fingers. "I'm not...I can't..." She blows a breath through her lips, head tilting back so that her tear-laced gaze fixes to the ceiling. She steadies herself, licks her lips, looks back down to him. "I'm not ready for that yet. So please...don't."</p><p>Jon bunches his brows as he watches her, that warm and warless face easing into something of exhaustion, a quiet understanding flickering through his gaze. He nods, once, stiffly – offering a comforting smile. "Okay," he says, nodding again, looking about the room as he takes a breath. "Okay." His hand slips from her braid.</p><p>She misses the contact instantly, alarmingly.</p><p>When Jon glances back to her, his gaze catches along her braid again, brows furrowing sharply. She looks down at what has caught his attention, finding the smear of blood along the ends of her hair, matted slightly from his touch. Her mouth opens at the sight, but no words come – the image inexplicably seared into her mind, a rush of something keen and unfamiliar filling her.</p><p>"Your hair..." Jon says despondently, turning his mud-caked palms up to his inspection, staring at them with regret, before blinking back up to her gaze. "I've soiled you."</p><p>Sansa bites her lip, throat tight. "Jon," she sighs, taking one of his upturned hands in her own, twisting so that she leans back similarly along the desk beside him. "I've been bloodied worse," she says, taking the cloth to his hand now, fingers gentle but sure as they spread his own open, wiping smoothly over his palm.</p><p>A sound brews in Jon's chest much like a growl, his jaw clenching at her words. He never likes to hear such things. She smiles softly to herself, a familiar sorrow curling at the edges of her mouth. He'd been bloodied much worse himself, after all. Sansa looks back up at him, reaching up to brush a wayward curl behind his ear. "I'm okay," she assures him.</p><p>He stares warily at her, shoulders bunching.</p><p>Her smile turns exasperated. "I'm okay," she urges, hand retreating from his cheek to return to her task. She dips the cloth once more into the water basin at her side, before bringing it back to his calloused palm.</p><p>He doesn't argue further with her, taking to watching her instead. His hand is warm in hers, and awkwardly large, his fingers long and rough, slipping clumsily between hers as she clears the blood caked into the lines of his palm. She doesn't question how easily he opens to her touch, how natural and right his hand beneath hers seems to feel, even marred as it is.</p><p>She purposely ignores lingering long on the ruined skin of his knuckles, the flesh torn and bloodied from where he broke Ramsay's jaw beneath his thundering fists.</p><p>Sansa licks her lips at the reminder, the breath fluttering from her like an uncaged thing.</p><p>Distantly, she wonders what the brace of his knuckles along her cheek would feel like, the drag of his hand down the line of her jaw, the calloused tips of his fingers pressing urgently into her flesh.</p><p>How those ruined knuckles would taste beneath her lips.</p><p>She swallows thickly, shaking the unbidden image away, swiping perhaps more forcefully than needed along his dirtied palm. His hand twitches beneath the pressure, fingers curling. She stops, frowning at the dirt caked beneath his nails.</p><p>How much washing, exactly, is needed to be free of <em>him</em>? Free of Ramsay.</p><p>It's a question she's asked herself many nights.</p><p>Sansa burns the thought from her mind, looking up to find Jon staring at the far bed, at the familiar furs lining it. Another lump forms in her throat. She gentles her touch along his hand. "Why did you come here?" she asks quietly.</p><p>To Robb's room, she doesn't say. Perhaps because it doesn't need saying.</p><p>Jon sighs, his shoulders slumping with it. "I guess I just missed my brother," he gets out on a heavy exhale.</p><p>She's missed him as well. Some days such an admission comes easily. Others...</p><p>Sansa gives one last swipe to Jon's palm, as satisfied with her work as she's going to be, given the state of filth he'd been in earlier, before returning the rag to the basin.</p><p>Jon turns to her, hand outstretched. "Here," he says.</p><p>She hands him the rinsed towel, watching silently as he takes it to his other hand, the steady, even cleaning motion almost calming to her.</p><p>She has the sudden urge to lean against him, to place her cheek at his shoulder, to simply...rest. Here. With him. Where she can sleep soundly and safely.</p><p>Just...rest.</p><p>She inclines her head toward him just slightly when his words stop her. "You know, I wonder – <em>all the time</em> - what would have happened if I'd joined him when Father died."</p><p>Sansa stills beside him, chest constricting. She stays desperately still.</p><p>Jon's gaze is focused on the wiping of his hand, brows drawn down in consternation. "I wonder if it would have made a difference. If we'd have gotten you back. If we'd have found Arya." Here his voice breaks, the mention of their sister sending his eyes to instant wetness.</p><p>She looks away before the tears can take her, too.</p><p>Jon clears his throat, sniffling softly, a brush of his hand at his nose before he's straightening, shoulders pulled back. "I wonder if I could have saved them. Saved you," he says dejectedly.</p><p>Sansa feels that familiar suffocation closing around her throat, a ripe, pungent regret filling her. She pushes from her lean, arms going around herself. She keeps her back to Jon as she takes a step away, eyes settling along the grey stone wall. "You said you'd protect me," she begins, taking a steadying breath with the words, "But I've heard such promises before." She glances at him over her shoulder. "And I've learned not to trust in them. You're not the first brother to swear such, after all."</p><p>Jon drops the now-ruined rag to the table, standing fully. "Sansa," he says, and she cannot be sure whether it's chastisement or shame that tinges his words. Perhaps it's both. Perhaps it's neither.</p><p>Perhaps she has stopped understanding her brothers long ago.</p><p>"I'm not angry with you," she says on a huff, turning fully to him. She steps back toward him, closing the space between them. "I'm grateful. Truly, I am. You fought for me, Jon. You fought for me when others..." She sighs, hands winding nervously together before her. Her gaze dips off to the side. "When others wouldn't," she finishes lowly.</p><p>"When Robb wouldn't, you mean," Jon says.</p><p>Sansa glances back up at him, mouth opening, but no words follow.</p><p>She remembers the morning she learned of his death. The sun was insultingly bright. The gardens were beautiful. And she was irreparably and inconsolably -</p><p>Alone.</p><p>She clears her throat, steadying the nervous motion of her thumb worrying into her opposite palm. "Robb was never going to make the exchange for Jaime Lannister. I understand that now," she says with more surety than she thought herself capable of. Her jaw unclenches minutely at the relief she feels when her words never crack.</p><p>But Jon is unconvinced, it seems, stepping toward her, and suddenly – suddenly that insulting sun is back, incessant at her eyes, blinding her, searing the backs of her eyelids, a heat so branding and sharp she feels it in her bones, cut down to the quick.</p><p>Jon's shadow casts darkly over her and she breathes again, mouth tipping open, staring at the edge of collarbone that peaks from his half-unlaced tunic. She stares long and hard at the image, tears blinked fiercely back, her shoulders taut and stiff as she stands rooted to the floor.</p><p>He sighs, and the sound nearly knocks the wind from her, so focused she is on that sole spot of his chest.</p><p>"Do you resent him for it?" he asks, and she has never heard his voice so trembling, so near.</p><p>She whips her head up, catches his eyes alarmingly close to hers, that suffocation gripping at her throat once more. She licks her lips, does not let the tears gather further. "We've had this conversation before," she says stiffly.</p><p>"Aye, and never finished it," he says gruffly, tipping his head toward her, eyes softening, one hand going to cup her elbow.</p><p>She goes rigid at the touch, throat constricting.</p><p>His gaze falls to the floor, a heavy sigh leaving him, the exhaustion writ across his dirtied features, in the line of his shoulders, in the loose grip he keeps at her elbow. "Talk to me, Sansa," he pleads, voice wavering, and she shuts her eyes to the sound.</p><p>Like a gale. Like a mountain coming down. This is how it empties from her.</p><p>"What do you want me to say?" she bites out, voice quaking. A fierce, clipped thunder.</p><p>Jon snaps his gaze up to hers at the sound.</p><p>She curls her lip, teeth barred, when she opens her eyes to his. She swears she tastes blood on her tongue, but then, perhaps that is simply memory. Copper reminiscence. "What do you want me to say, hmm? That I hated him? That I cursed how I wished for him, even still? How I put all my hopes on him? Our brother? Our <em>brother</em>, Jon, our – gods," she spits, voice cracking. She's seething now, the tears hot on her lids, and she didn't think she could get any closer, didn't think she could feel the heat of him from where she stood but then his breath is fanning her cheeks and his eyes are glistening and wide before hers and she could count his lashes if she wanted, she could trace the line of his nose even with eyes closed, she could hear the sharp intake of breath he takes when she inclines toward him, face screwed into something ugly and loathsome. She could press the line of her completely to him if she wanted, only his shaking grip at her elbow keeping her steady, weighted, tethered. She feels the helplessness rip through her in a hated familiarity. Her brows bunch, her sneer quivering and pained. "You want me to say how I thought of throwing myself from the window the day I heard he and Mother were murdered? How I hated <em>myself</em> more than I could ever hate him? How I could never forgive myself for feeling all those ugly, terrible things for him? How he <em>died</em> and I still had bitterness in my heart for him? Is that what you want me to say?" she shrieks.</p><p>His hands go for her arms. "Sansa," he urges.</p><p>But she's wild in her grief now, heart staggered in her chest. She rips her arms from his hold. "Don't touch me!"</p><p>"Sansa!"</p><p>She wails, sudden and sharp and biting at her lungs. Her fists go for his chest then, her vision blurred by the unbidden tears.</p><p>He grips at her again, undaunted. "Sansa, please," he gets out, trying to steady her thrashing. He yanks her to his chest, and they stumble, one of his arms going round her back, her fists clenching in his tunic, thudding at his chest, wailing, <em>wailing</em>, crashing into him, and he grips at her, rocks under the weight of her, slams back into the desk and she doesn't stop – <em>could never stop</em>.</p><p>"Sansa!" he gasps into her hair, one hand slipping up the nape of her neck, holding her to him, his breath panted at her ear.</p><p>She slumps against his chest, knuckles white where they grip him, her cheeks stained from the grime of his tunic, her sobs shuddering through her. "Why did we come back?" she wails, eyes squeezing shut.</p><p>Jon rocks her, keeps his grip tight, his hand fumbling in her hair, his own sob choked off at the tongue. "Sansa, I don't - "</p><p>"They're gone," she says, a swift, disbelieving exhale. "They're all...gone." She stills in his hold, her breath pooling in the column of his throat.</p><p>"Sansa..."</p><p>"So, why did we come back, Jon?" she asks at his cheek, head tilted up toward his, fists bunched at his chest.</p><p>Jon closes his eyes, breathes deep, keeps his hand buried in her hair, his other wound tight around her back.</p><p>Like a mountain coming down.</p><p>(Enough to shake her at the roots.)</p><p>She blinks her eyes open at his heavy silence, chest heaving against his, her lips brushing at his beard when she pulls back just enough to meet his eyes. He blinks them unsteadily open at the motion, catches her gaze with his own pained one.</p><p>Sansa's eyes flick between his, her lips trembling. "Being back here... being back at Winterfell..." she tries, voice shaking, eyes watering, "Without them..." She shakes her head, voice failing her.</p><p>Jon stares long at her, eyes never moving from hers, the hot pant of his breaths softly fanning her cheeks, and she moves on instinct, reaches a hand up to brace along his cheek.</p><p>His lips part minutely at the touch, just enough to catch her attention, enough to flick her gaze swiftly down to his mouth and then back up.</p><p>He only pants harder, fingers curling tight along the small of her back.</p><p>She stares at him, that flutter of something uncaged, beating harsh at her ribs.</p><p>"Jon..."</p><p>"I will never leave you," he swears suddenly, gaze unwavering.</p><p>Her fist curls tight in his tunic, her knuckles braced to his heaving chest.</p><p>They stay staring at each other, her body held tight to his, their breaths mingling between them.</p><p>Her eyes flutter shut, her sorrow unending, rising high up her throat until she is choking on it.</p><p>It never leaves her.</p><p>"Gods, but Rickon. And Robb. And..." Her eyes fly open, meeting his instantly. "What about Bran? And Arya? They...they - "</p><p>"Sansa," he says, voice low, head tipped to hers.</p><p>She swallows her words back instantly. The heat of his palm at her back keeps her rooted.</p><p>"I will never leave you, do you understand?"</p><p>Her eyes flick between his, searching, her fingers curling softly at his cheek.</p><p>He releases a short breath, an incredulous exhale. His hold of her loosens somewhat, gentles. "We won more than just Winterfell today," he says, sighing. His eyes are imploring on hers, his fingers flexing in her hair. He clears his throat. "I didn't come back just for a pile of stones. Sansa."</p><p>She gulps back her unease, hand slipping from his cheek to rest along his chest. "Then why did you come back?"</p><p>His lips part again, an unconscious motion. His gaze flickers down to her mouth, briefly, his slow intake of breath stilling the words at her tongue. When he glances back up she finds herself staring hard at him, unable to uncurl her fists from him, hooked to the shape of him, melded to his lines.</p><p>She fits against him seamlessly, she finds. And perhaps that scares her more than anything.</p><p>(Perhaps she knows exactly what he came back for.)</p><p>Jon's face softens, the intensity bleeding out of him. A blink, and it's gone. He is her brother again.</p><p>He never stopped being her brother, she reminds herself forcefully.</p><p>His lip quirks slightly at the edges, his hand slipping from the back of her head to brace at her neck, his thumb rubbing reassuringly along her jaw. "You're not alone anymore," he says with a tight smile, brows pinching together.</p><p>Sansa sighs.</p><p>He's never been one to hide his pains. And maybe they have that in common.</p><p>Or maybe she only reads him better now that he's grown out of the boy she'd never bothered to look at before.</p><p>Sansa worries her lip, shoulders easing some of their tension. "What if...what if we're the last? The last of the Starks?" she asks quietly, barely a whisper.</p><p>She hates the words even as they leave her, sour on the tongue.</p><p>Jon clenches his jaw at the words, and it's a different kind of pain that flashes through his eyes this time. A pain she knows now. A pain that goes by the name 'bastard'.</p><p>His arms unhook from her then, bracing back along the edge of the desk, and she steps from him with the motion, allows him this small distance, even when every fiber of her being is screaming at her not to. Her hands slip from him, suddenly conscious of their closeness, and startled with the fierceness with which she misses it already.</p><p>Jon sighs again, a hand wiped roughly over his hair.</p><p>She knows the argument that rests along his tongue already.</p><p>"Sansa, I'm not a Sta – "</p><p>"Stop."</p><p>He huffs, eyeing her darkly. "Sansa."</p><p>"I don't want to hear it," she tells him, chin lifted. "You're Ned Stark's son. You've the blood of our family in you. You're a <em>Stark</em>, Jon, and I'll hear nothing that argues otherwise."</p><p>Jon blinks at her, mouth tightening into a frown, eyes watering before he can glance away, a rueful chuckle leaving him. He wipes at his eyes, heaves a labored sigh, looks back at her.</p><p>She goes nearly breathless at the sight of him, missing him even with their nearness. The feeling is overwhelming in its intensity.</p><p>"Gods, how can you say it so easily?" he laughs.</p><p>She feels the weightless form of a smile edge at her lips. She aches to reach for him again, but keeps her hands held tight before her. "We'd never have made it this far without you. We'd never have made it to Winterfell." It's not a truth she can deny, not one she <em>wants</em> to deny. Home is only home now because he is here, with her.</p><p>Because she isn't alone anymore.</p><p>Jon dips his head, that soft chuckle breaking from him once more, and it's the most beautiful thing Sansa's ever heard, her chest constricting at the sound.</p><p>He reaches for her hand then, watches the motion of his own calloused, dirt-smudged fingers winding around hers, his thumb brushing over her knuckles in what has now become familiar comfort between them.</p><p>Sansa dares not speak, lest she shatter the moment.</p><p>Jon smiles tenderly down at their joined hands. "<em>I'd</em> never have made it this far without you."</p><p>Sansa's lips part, the breath stealing from her.</p><p>Jon looks back up at her, gaze meeting hers, and she rocks toward him unconsciously.</p><p>She's going to do something dangerous, she knows. Something stupidly, incomprehensibly dangerous – if she doesn't stop right here.</p><p>Sansa pulls her hand from his gently, steadying her breath, winding her hands back together before her gracefully. A courteous armor. She clears her throat. "They won't follow me," she says, voice far more even than she expects. "The Northern lords."</p><p>Jon frowns instantly. "You're the Lady of Winterfell."</p><p>She would laugh if it didn't strike an ache in her chest. "You heard Lyanna Mormont. They won't trust the North to a Lannister or Bolton bride."</p><p>That growl is back, brewing in his throat, his eyes dark on hers when he straightens from his lean along the desk. "They wouldn't dare besmirch you like that. That's not who you are, and you know it."</p><p>She smothers the flare of heat that coils in her gut when he closes toward her with the words. She licks her lips, lifts her chin. "But do they?"</p><p>Jon opens his mouth, finding no words to follow. A subtle anger lines his brows, his mouth pressing into a tight frown.</p><p>She softens at the sight. "They won't follow me. But they'll follow you."</p><p>He deflates instantly, a hand wiping over his mouth, head shaking. An incredulous breath leaves him. "They shouldn't," he says lowly, almost like a curse.</p><p>She doesn't know why it should anger her. "You're a good leader, Jon," she presses, hoping he doesn't glean the desperation in her tone, only the earnestness.</p><p>He throws her a dark look. "The scars on my chest say differently," he spits out.</p><p>She nearly crumples at the words, a rush of keen sorrow lancing through her, and there – there it is again.</p><p>(Something dangerous – at the tips of her fingers, at the edge of her lips.)</p><p>But Jon catches the words just as they leave his mouth, a rough exhale breaking from him, a shake of his head as he glances to the ceiling, tries to rein it in. "Sorry, that's not – I don't mean..." He grinds his teeth, digs the heel of his palm into his eye, drops his hand just as he drops his gaze back to hers. "I just feel like all I've been doing these last few years is making mistakes," he chokes out.</p><p>And all at once he is the boy she knew in her youth. Or thought she knew, at least. He is the bastard brother who played wooden swords with Robb in the courtyard, who tore through the keep with Arya squealing atop his shoulders, who smiled at the ribbon she tied around Lady's neck. The boy who sat always in the back of the hall, who fumbled apologies when he spilled a cup of tea on her skirts, who wiped furiously at his tearing eyes the first time he returned from one of Father's executions.</p><p>The boy who turned into a man who turned into a commander who turned into a corpse.</p><p>She doesn't think she will ever stop feeling deeply, irreparably <em>angered</em> by the injustice of it all. She doesn't think she will ever stop wanting to embrace that boy who became a man who became a commander who became –</p><p>Jon.</p><p>Sansa blinks at him.</p><p><em>Jon</em>.</p><p>(She thinks of the soiled ends of her braid.)</p><p>She moves on instinct, hand rising to brace at his chest, those scars he speaks so little of resting just beneath her palm.</p><p>Jon sucks a sharp breath through his teeth, stilling before her.</p><p>Her eyes trace the soft line of her fingers at his chest, pressing gently over his heart, sure and anchored. "You follow your heart," she says, eyes fixed to her trembling hand. "And it's a <em>good</em> heart, Jon. That isn't a mistake." She presses firmly over his heart, intent. "<em>This</em> isn't a mistake," she urges, meaningful, gaze flickering up to his.</p><p>The boy who became a man who became –</p><p>A Stark.</p><p>Pack.</p><p><em>Hers</em>.</p><p>Sansa stops, swallows, her mouth trembling as she whispers, "<em>You</em>...you are not a mistake."</p><p>His face crumbles at the words, his head dropping, and she is wrapping around him instantly, tugging him into her, his hands going round her back, bunching in the material of her dress, and she dips his head into the crook of her shoulder, sighs at his ear, holds him and holds him and holds him.</p><p>He does not bother to smother his tears, his broken exhale panted at her neck, and she finds she does not mind his mud-slicked hair pressed to her cheek, nor the painful curl of his fingers at her back, nor the way he presses into her like a wild thing – blood-splattered and ravenous.</p><p>She stumbles against his weight, hands winding into his hair, lips pressed to his cheek.</p><p>The grunt of her name on his chapped lips, just at the edge of her ear, sends her spiraling with realization.</p><p>"Sansa," he moans, aching and needy and spent. "Sansa," he reveres.</p><p>Something dangerous, she thinks, gripping tightly to him, chest heaving, breath rattling.</p><p>The blood-matted end of her braid swings low behind her, a lung-splitting reminder.</p><p>"<em>I've soiled you."</em></p><p>She closes her eyes to his heady sigh, face buried in his shoulder, because the truth is – the truth is –</p><p>She'd let him soil her – again and again – without regret.</p><p>This time, when his hand slips possessively low along the curve of her hip, she does not pull from him.</p><p>They've both been bloodied far worse, after all.</p>
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